In a recent TopJaw clip, Gymkhana chef Sid Ahuja is asked by host Jesse Burgess to name his favourite Sunday roast. “The Hound, Chiswick,” Ahuja replies. “Their lasagna, fried chicken, you know…”
Burgess looks perplexed, but Ahuja is a heavyweight in his field. His answer’s not wrong, exactly; it just reflects a broader trend: the traditional British Sunday roast is in decline.
I’ve had a Sunday roast every week for the last two years. It’s not just nostalgia — it’s ritual. But among my friends, I’m an outlier. Polls from across the past few years seem to back up my experience: last year, a Payit by Natwest survey of 2,000 Brits found 27 per cent thought the Sunday roast “overrated”, while almost half would choose something other than a roast when dining out on a Sunday. Tesco, meanwhile, reported in 2023 that nearly half of 18- to 34-year-olds — 47 per cent — skip the traditional Sunday staple to save money.
To see it slip away would be to lose a piece of our cultural fabric.
So why the aversion? Well, for one, it’s no great secret that cooking a Sunday roast is a lot of work. Multiple pans, pots, ingredients. Different techniques, different rules, trial and error by the bucket load. And then, well: for any Londoner living in a cramped flat with a tiny kitchen, working up the full spread is hard to do.
As Shay Cooper, head chef at the Lanesborough Grill points out: “The decline of the traditional Sunday roast — a long-cherished British institution — is generally down to lifestyle shifts in our society. We are all busy and Sunday roasts require time to prepare and cook.”
Chef Jamie Shears, of the Audley and Mount Street, agrees that the shift is happening primarily in the home. “People are busier and don’t want to dedicate the time to cooking a roast,” he says, though restaurants seem to tell a different story. Shears estimates he serves around 3,000 roasts a year, while at the Marksman Public House in Hackney they’re so popular, the pub carries on serving them until 9pm each week.
The tradition of the Sunday roast is one that is deeply grounded in family tradition. Benjamin Mellor of Langan’s Brasserie notes that it “was all about the family sitting together, followed by a long walk afterwards.”
I know what Mellor means. For me, it conjures an image of my grandma who grew up in Yorkshire, spooning pickled onions and gherkins onto the meat, only to drown the dish in gravy — an act that was certainly passed down to me, and often gets me ridiculed on Instagram.
But new dining preferences are competing with old customs. Cooper points to Sunday brunch as a growing rival: “Brunch is now a competing activity. This used to be just a Saturday event but now has also become increasingly popular on Sundays.”
Lighter meals, especially in summer, may also be drawing diners away from heavier roasts, and health may be having an impact too. Stephen Tozer of Camden pub the Dark Horse is blunt about it. “Even if people are having a special meal on Sunday, there are a million things that they can choose over a traditional roast,” he says. “Easier things, cheaper things, healthier things.”
Meat, two veg, so much more
There is reason to return to the roast. It’s a meal with a little quiet poetry to it — a meal not just eaten, but shared, revered. For most of us, it is a meal heavy with memory; for me, the gherkins, for you something else — maybe a sauce on the side, a way of prepping the potatoes. To decry it for the effort it requires is to miss the point: all the best things take time. And it is time that brings its own rewards: the cooking fills the house with a fragrance of comfort, of meat turning golden, potatoes blistering and browning in the tray, gravy simmering.
Its origins lie in the fifteenth century, when villagers would leave often joints of meat in baker’s ovens on the way to church, returning to share the slow-cooked cuts. Families, then, gathered as one. Often now it’s friends, but in the same spirit. One with filled plates and phone, for a moment, left alone.
There is beauty in its predictability. A roast is not fashionable, but it doesn’t need to be. It is generous. It is grounding. To love a Sunday roast is to believe in tradition — not out of duty, but out of love. There may be other pretenders coming in but — no offense brunch, Sundays were spoken for centuries ago.
Kara Buffrey is a partner at Chompa hospitality focused agency